CES 2008: The Orphaned OLPC Gets Help From AMD

Advanced Micro Devices has given a helping hand to Nicholas Negroponte's OLPC initiative during the second day of Consumer Electronics Show. It seems that the One Laptop Per Child initiative had a difficult start this year, after its CTO, Mary Louis Jepsen left for her own business. As if this was not enough, Intel announced that it will terminate its involvement.

The company engineers volunteered to gather some funds in order to buy a couple of hundreds of the rugged XO sub-notebooks and donate them to children in the developing countries worldwide. This was part of the "Give One, Get One" program initiated by OLPC in North America and Canada.

The XO sub-notebook is a miniature PC destined for the developing countries. It is water and dust-resistant and allows the user to connect to the Internet through a wireless mesh network. The cheap and small computer is built around AMD's ultra-low power, low-end Geode processor.

According to AMD spokespersons, the employees chose to donate both laptops (although the program allows the sponsor to keep one of the two units). Moreover, the company made an official donation of $30,000 to the OLPC project.

The rugged XO ultra-mobile PC has successfully landed in the third-world countries such as Peru and Uruguay, but it also got extremely popular with students in the UK and the United States elementary schools. The computer has failed to enter the Nigerian and the Chinese markets as it was sabotaged by either larger or smaller corporations that defend their commercial interests in the area.

Some developing countries cannot even afford the low, $200 price tag per unit, so the children's only chance is to get it via extensive donations. The "Give One, Get One" program might soon become available on the European continent too, and OLPC plans to initiate a new program, the "Give Many, Send Anywhere" for those who can donate a minimum of 100 XO sub-notebooks.

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